epenthetic glide.

ROOD DAVID S rood at spot.Colorado.EDU
Sun Jun 22 06:26:00 UTC 2003


Answering both Rory and Linda:

	Rory, I use the letter "g" between vowels in Lakhota for the
voiced velar fricative, the voiced equivalent of IPA [x].  In printed
materials, that "g"  usually has a dot over it.  I suspect that's what you
mean by "gh", so I think the answer to your question is yes.

	Linda, in Lakhota there is a contrast between kichaga and kicaga.
The former is only the suus form (he made his own); the first person of
that paradigm is we*chage, 'I made mine'.  The latter, regular form is the
dative;  its first person from would be wakicage. 'I made it for her'.
Your example is a dative, so it would be regular "kicage" in Lakhota, too.

	The observation that I made in that little paper in 1985 is that
Lak. and Dhegiha both have one highly irregular paradigm and one quite
regular paradigm which seem to use the "ki (gi in Dhegiha)" prefix.  In
Lak., the irregular one is the suus, the regular one the dative for most
verbs, whereas in Dhegiha it's the other way around: the suus is the more
regular one. So I think the historically formal Dhegiha correspondent with
kichaga is giaghe, as Rory says, but the two words do not mean the same
thing.  I don't know what the suus form would be in Omaha.  Anyway, the
historical challenge is to figure out how this apparent flip-flop in
meanings could occur, as well as explaining the c/ch contrast.  I proposed
that the "ch" is not derived from the "k" of the stem but rather, as in
Dhegiha, from a form in which the "k" had been deleted.  Hence the Lakhota
evolution is something like **kiage > *kiyage > kichage, and the
synchronic idea that "k" > "ch" in this verb is an illusion, and there was
no "introduction of aspiration".  Hence the comment that "ch" is in some
sense "epenthetic" here.  As for the meaning flip-flop, I only pointed out
the observation in Boas and Deloria that these two paradigms get mixed up
even in Lakhota, varying from verb to verb and even from speaker family to
speaker family as to whether the regular one is dative or suus or whether
there even is a contrast.

I said this a lot more clearly in the paper, I think.  It's less than 3
pages long if you want to dig it out.

Two theories about Assiniboine: (1) they may have neutralized the two
paradigms, dropping the irregular one, as has happened in many Lakhota
verbs, or (2) you may not have elicited the suus forms (they don't come up
very often in real life).  I suppose it's also possible that they never
developed the irregular one, but that would require that Lak. and Assinib.
had separated before the suus froms evolved, which would be longer ago
than I think is likely.

David


David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Linda Cumberland wrote:

> For the sake of comparison I'll throw this in. I checked this Lakhota
> anomaly for Assiniboine and found the regular form 'kicag^a', i.e., no
> aspiration:
>
> waxpe mijijag^a  'he made tea for me'
>
> It would be interesting to know whether aspiration was introduced into
> the Lakhota form or if Assiniboine leveled the anomaly. Jundging from
> David's comments I'd guess the latter. I have found several instances
> where Lakhota irregularities are regular in Assiniboine.  This is one
> case, another (which has nothing to do with epenthetic glides, but
> supports my growing sense that there has been a lot of leveling in
> Asb) is the paradigm for yutA 'eat', which is a completely regular
> y-stem in Assiniboine (note: Asb does not ablaut word finally):
>
> Asb:                        Lak:
>
> 1s   mnuta                  wate
> 2s   nuta                   yate
> 3s   yuta                   yute
> 1pl  uNyutapi               uNyuta pi
> 2pl  nutapi                 yata pi
> 3pl  yutapi                 yuta pi
>
> Linda
> -------------------
> >
> > Sorry to be coming in to this discussion late (and not to have read
> the
> > rest of of it yet -- maybe this is superfluous).  I've been doing
> Wichita
> > in Anadarko for the past couple of weeks.
> >
> > I think it's relevnat to remind you of my little blurb in the issue
> of
> > IJAL that was dedicated to Eric Hamp (October 1985).  My concern was
> to
> > figure out why the suus form of the Lakhota verb "kaga" 'make' has
> an
> > irregular aspirated "ch" for the "k" (kichaga, not the expected
> kicaga).
> > What's relevant here is that this aspirated "ch" reflects PMV *y,
> and
> > the *y has to have been an epenthetic element after deletion of the
> > initial "k"  of the verb.  I don't know what the relative
> chronologies
> > would be, but it is NOT the case that all epenthetic situations seem
> to go
> > back to *r.
> >
> > David S. Rood
> > Dept. of Linguistics
> > Univ. of Colorado
> > 295 UCB
> > Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> > USA
> > rood at colorado.edu
> >
> > On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Rory M Larson wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > John wrote:
> > > > Actually, it seems likely that the -y- stage was in
> Proto-Mississippi
> > > > Valley, since all of the MV languages have reflexes of *r for
> epenthetic
> > > > situations.
> > >
> > > Hmm.  I was afraid of that.  Thanks to John
> > > for his thorough discussion of this fly in
> > > my ointment!  However,
> > >
> > > Bob wrote:
> > > > As John points out, lots of western hemisphere
> > > > languages simply use a tap or flap to separate vowels
> > > > in hiatus.  There's no need to go through the phonetic
> > > > [y] stage.  It is possible that Common Siouan /r/ is or
> > > > was phonetically 'dh'.  Its reflexes turn up as a host
> > > > of (mostly) dental liquid sounds, dh, r, n, l, t, and
> > > > even y in sundry languages and dialects.  The important
> > > > thing isn't so much its precise phonetic reality but
> > > > what it contrasts with.
> > >
> > > So perhaps I don't really need to worry about
> > > the sound being precisely a phonetic [y].  Just
> > > being as close in the neighborhood as [r] or [dh]
> > > may be good enough.  All I need is for the (*r)
> > > in *=ire to go away if the final -e is clipped.
> > > So if (*r) represents whatever sound in the [r],
> > > [y], [dh] range, I would propose this development
> > > of *=ire for Winnebago and OP:
> > >
> > >          MVS: =i(*r)e
> > >                  |
> > >       ---------------------
> > >       |                   |
> > >       |            Dh: =i(*r)e
> > >       |                   |
> > >       |                =i(*r)    (-e is clipped)
> > >       |                   |
> > > Wi: =ire             OP: =i      ((*r) goes away)
> > >
> > >
> > > Now if we take the verb /xe/, "bury", in plain form
> > > and the two alternate 3rd person plural forms, we
> > > have:
> > >
> > >   MVS:     *xe        *xa=pi         *xa=ire
> > >
> > >    Wi:      xe         xa=wi          xa=ire
> > >
> > >    OP:      xe         xa=bi          xa=i
> > >
> > > I've taken the Winnebago /xe/ example (via memory)
> > > from Lipkind.  Note that =ire conditions a-grade
> > > ablaut in this case.
> > >
> > >
> > > John wrote:
> > > > This is certainly an interesting hypothesis, though ideally we'd
> have to
> > > > understand the introduction of i into -ire (cf. IO -ne -
> pronounced with
> > > > enye before i).
> > >
> > > Do you see a problem with reconstructing MVS *=ire?
> > > I think you were coming up with *=krE for PS.
> > > Would *=kirE work?  Or do you mean that we can't
> > > get from MVS /*=ire/ to IO /=ne/?
> > >
> > >
> > > > Apart from that we'd have to assume that this source of i was
> generalized
> > > > from the third person to the inclusive and second persons from
> the third,
> > > > which is where this marker occurs in the Siouan languages that
> have it.
> > >
> > > Yes, and also from 3rd plural to 3rd singular in
> > > the declarative form, if the other ones are all
> > > like Winnebago.  For this matter, I think we might
> > > want to consider a hybrid explanation.  I've been
> > > insisting that =bi and =i are separate words in
> > > OP, while John and Bob have been equally insistent
> > > that =i is a phonological reduction of =bi, because
> > > they are so very similar phonologically, syntactically
> > > and semantically.  Well, why couldn't both views be
> > > correct?
> > >
> > > Suppose the sequence I propose above is correct,
> > > with *=i < *=i(*r)e coming down to proto-Dhegiha
> > > or proto-OP as an alternate 3rd person pluralizer.
> > > *=pi|*=bi is the general pluralizer, and is also
> > > used for the 3rd person singular declarative.
> > > There is presumably some subtle difference in
> > > meaning between the two particles, else the *=i(*r)e
> > > form would not have been retained.  But when *=i(*r)e
> > > is reduced to *=i, the two become very confusable.
> > > When the stop part of *=pi is elided in rapid speech,
> > > it comes out as [i], which is interpreted as *=i(re).
> > > Following slurred *=pi, a reconstructed *=i appears
> > > in all the locations originally reserved to *=pi.
> > > The process is similar to English "should have"
> > > first being slurred to "should've" and then
> > > reconstructed as "should of".
> > >
> > > Now the difference between *=pi and *=i depends on
> > > whatever sematic distinction they carry.  If this
> > > difference is weak, then *=i is regarded as simply
> > > a slurred variant of the more proper *=pi.  In this
> > > case, the old *=i(*r)e particle dies out, even in
> > > its original 3rd plural position, perhaps leaving
> > > behind a few traces of its original presence in
> > > fossil "diphthongs" such as /tta=i=che/.  This is
> > > what will have happened in Osage and Kaw.
> > >
> > > If the semantic distinction is strengthened,
> > > however, then the original 3rd plural *=i(*r)e
> > > element bursts its cage and becomes a completely
> > > parallel, but separate, form that needs to be
> > > rigorously distinguished from the *=pi form.
> > > This is what will have happened in OP.
> > >
> > > Rory
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>



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